Description

Abstract:Jerry Nixon welcomes Janet Schneider, Mark Inderhees and Frank Chen to the show as they discuss the Geolocation API for Windows 8 app developers. Tune in as they discuss its benefits, features and how to implement it in your app.

The Discussion

George

Thanks for the amazing video.

I have a question regarding the way how the GeoLocaton API can retrieve information about a certain position. It was explained brilliantly when it comes to GPS and WiFi. My question is if it's possible to get this information from mobile cellular net (the mobile provider)? I mean when you have a device, for example phone, with a SIM card and a necessary connectivity to a mobile provider can GeoLocation API use this connectivity to obtain information about the position from the mobile provider's cells?

@George: Yeah. The API is clever enough to look for every available avenue. It's a heuristic that measures battery cost, bandwidth cost, and accuracy. Should a SIM be in the device, as I understand it, it does not matter.

A quick clarification for @George and @jerry_nixon, the Win8 inbox Windows Location Provider will not use Cell tower information to provide location, so there is no inbox Cellular location provider to the Geolocation API. That is, just having a SIM in a Win8 device will not automatically start providing location from cell towers. But a developer could create a location sensor driver (no easy task: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff545919(v=vs.85).aspx ) that consumes cell data and exposes the location to the Geolocation API so that any app developer can easily use that location data via Geolocation API along with the location data from other sources already available (Wi-Fi, IP, GPS).

Windows Phone, however, does use cell tower based location by default as that is always available. The Win8 and Win Phone 8 Geolocation APIs (WinRT) are aligned so app developers can easily share code across those platforms.